Common Core State Standards
This page contains a PDF of the overview of the Common Core Standards as well as the Common Core State Standards for Social Studies. Some important items to think of when it comes time to write your curriculum are:

  • The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are an overview of WHAT to teach and not HOW to teach
  • The K-12 standards focus on helping our students to become college and career ready in literacy by the end of high school
  • These standards also provide a vision of what it means to be a literate person in the twenty-first century
  • The K-12 grade-specific standards define end-of-year expecations
  • In order to be ready for college, workforce training, and life in a technicological society, students need the ability to gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize, and report on information and ideas, to conduct original research in order to answer questions or solve problems, and to analyze and create a high volume of extensive range of print and nonprint texts in media forms old and new
  • The CCSS insist that instruction in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language be a shared responsibility within the school.
  • Part of the motivation behind the interdiscplinary approach to literacy is based on the fact that students need to be proficient in reading complex informational text independently in a variety of content areas.


A shift is taking place in the distribution of the type of text a student should be exposed to in the areas of reading and writing. Below are two tables that illustrate this shift.

Distribution of LIterary and Information Passages
by Grade in the 2009 NAEP Reading Framework
Grade
LiteraryText
InformationalText
4
50%
50%
8
45%
55%
12
30%
70%

Distribution of Communicative Purposes by Grade
in the 2011 NAEP Writing Framework
Grade
To Persuade
To
Explain
To Convey
Experience
4
30%
35%
35%
8
35%
35%
30%
12
40%
40%
20%

According to the CCSS document, students who are college and career ready in reading, writing, speaking, listening and language exhibit the following:
  • They demonstrate independence
  • They build strong content knowledge
  • They respond to varying demands of audience, task, purpose and discipline
  • They comprehend as well as critique
  • They value evidence
  • They use technology and digital medial strategically and capably
  • They come to understand other perspectives and cultures.